“Perhaps she isn’t protecting anyone.”
“She isn’t telling me everything.”
“Have you told her everything?”
“I don’t talk about the years I lost,” David said bitterly. “They are best forgotten. They?—”
He broke off suddenly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at his brother.
They had both heard the sound. A strange, quick sound, a creaking sound. David drew a finger to his lips and made a motion to Hawk.
It looked as if there was nothing more than a break in the rock wall of the tunnel to their left. As if the cave-in had created a crack. Yet, as David moved around, he could see that the thin break in the rock was complete—and that a man could slip through it. And seeing how the Highland cliffs here were filled with caverns and tunnels, it seemed likely that they might find another extension of the tunnels through the crack.
They approached the break from opposite sides, David reaching it just before Hawk. As he came to the break, he heard movement and swiftly, if somewhat recklessly, crawled through the opening, expecting to fall under attack at any moment.
But whoever watched them, and listened to them, did not intend to attack.
The watcher sought only to run.
“Hurry!” David cried to his brother, entering into a cavern where he found himself in total darkness, but hearing now the steady thud of footfalls upon the earth as the watcher tried to escape.
Trying to adapt to the blackness, David followed fleetly, trusting the earth beneath his feet since he had heard the footfalls upon it just seconds before.
He heard his brother behind him as he closed in on the runner. He catapulted himself forward, his arms thrust out in the blackness.
Encircling a body.
They plowed to the earth together. David drew his knife from the sheath at his calf just as Hawk struck a match against the wall, illuminating the cave.
“Sweet Jesus, you!” David thundered down at the face below him.
“You are alive!” the watcher said in astonishment, heedless of the blade beneath his nose.
“Aye, and anxious to know what goes on—and where the lass may be!” David said angrily.
“Let me up. I pose no danger to you.”
David glanced at his brother. Hawk’s barely perceptible nod assured him that it would be unlikely that the man could take them both by surprise and escape them.
“All right, MacGinnis,” David said. “Get up. And explain why in God’s name you are spying upon me.”
“Aye, Douglas, I shall do so. If you will promise to explain to me why you wish to make us all think you haunt us when you are a flesh-and-blood man!”
“Let’s make these explanations swift,” Hawk said softly. “Remember, we still seek Sabrina—unless, MacGinnis, you know where she might be.”
“I seek her myself.”
“And I seek the truth,” David said flatly.
“I’ll give you what I have of it.”
By late afternoon, all of Craig Rock had been turned upside down, and no trace of Sabrina had been found. Constable Clarkhad come up from the city, but he had been less concerned than the people of Craig Rock, for he was quite convinced that young women frequently disappeared from small villages at whim, since he’d had a daughter himself who had run off to see the world. He spoke with Shawna, Gawain, Hawk, and Skylar in the great hall at Castle Rock, taking information from Skylar and trying to assure her that Sabrina was most probably quite fine and off on some lark while his own two men continued to search the property and the area beyond with Lowell, Aidan, Alaric, and Alistair.
As the day had passed, Shawna felt a greater and greater sense of dismay.
David had assured her that he would cover Castle Rock with his own search—slipping through all those secret corridors and stairways that were unknown to the others. He had apparently found nothing. While she and Aidan had searched Castle MacGinnis, the others had scoured the village, the mines, the fields, the stables, and more.
“You mustn’t fret so, for lasses do these things, Lady Douglas. Perhaps there was a man involved,” the heavy-set, florid constable suggested with a wink as he accepted a whiskey against the brisk cool turn of the day in the great hall at Castle Rock.